Monday, July 23, 2012

Road experience and Lada-Volkswagen fusion

The general impression of
road traffic after crossing the border from Estonia to the European
part of Russia is striking. Although Eastern European countries still
know the concept of former used-to-be highway prototypes including
left-turns across opposite lanes, red lights and even zebra crossings
at any time on only one and a half lanes in each direction, the
Russians take this to the state-of-the-art and push the experience to
the max.

On a first glimpse,
everything that might be done within the physical limits of time,
space and speed will be done deliberately and with hardly any
pre-warning such as turning indicators, headlights or horns. This
includes passing a slower vehicle without being able to finish the
maneuver before opposite traffic arrives, putting temporarily ones
life into the hands of the others hoping they will somehow arrange it
all to fit. If for any reason traffic stops on a number N of lanes
going one direction, after a couple seconds you immediately find
yourself in a flow of N+2 lanes, including opposite lanes and
unstable dust/stone/grass lanes on your very right. Surprisingly,
this all goes without any mayor emotional explosions, the additional
lanes are somehow accepted by everyone (including officials) and all
merges together as required to the number of N lanes hardly before
any major damage occurs. Again, most of this completely without any
indications or audible feedback by anyone. Traffic gets stuck very
frequently for no obvious reasons, for instance due to zebra
crossings which seem to
be untouchable as even grand mothers throw themselves onto the road
without hesitation and even the largest road train slams the brakes
at excessive speed of up to 120 km/h. The newbie also struggles to
understand why sometimes traffic slows down due to a slower vehicle
as the law of N+2 would not allow this scenario. The explanation for
this is a wide-spread warning custody of simple headlight signals to
signal other traffic participants the presence of officials, formerly
also practiced in France. Changing lanes (for any maneuver including
passing slower vehicles) however seems to follow a highly elaborated
procedure. In general again, everything within physical limits is
allowed, turning signals are considered optional, the behavior and
the placement and speed of the vehicle is as much signalization that
one could expect. As long as there is no other possibility than
changing lane, anything is allowed and everyone else adopts. However,
changing lane early because of some distant upcoming obstacle is not
generally accepted and responded with horns, which shall not be
understood as emotional expression but rather a signal to communicate
its presence. Finally speed limits are specified somewhere in the
traffic laws but not respected by anyone, inner city driving downtown
Moscow or St. Petersburg is frequently at more than 100 km/h, being
generally accepted even by officials. There are hardly any stationary
speed traps and we have never seen a mobile one flashing or a vehicle
with excessive speed being pulled over by the police. The friendly
officials only seem to insist on strict obedience of “do not
overtake” signals and infrequent drivers license check, which they
usually gave up quickly if you talk to them in anything else than
Russian.

The road conditions can
not be generalized, we have seen anything from excellent driveways
like newly built French private highways, most frequently older
streets with varying damage from surface bladders down to collapsed
foundation with tremendous holes and deep lane
grooves and finally also non-existing unpaved
dirt/mud/gravel/dust streets instead of the promised highway (giving
the creative drivers even a higher degree of liberty when it comes to
lane definition. This is valid for urban and rural areas, the road
condition may change at any time at no defined city or oblast border.

A couple days ago, we were
just to exit the national park in the mountains where we passed the
night on lake Zaratkul, diving
in the endless void of Western Siberia when Karossi decided to
stop operating at once. We rolled out, trying to reach a spot that
would give us at least a minimal level of protection against the
burning sun and the blasting trucks passing by, getting the head
under the hood immediately. Some quick checks showed that spark and
gas seemed OK and that there is no easy way to figure out the root
cause of the issue and we would need professional assistance. In a
country without AAA, TCS, ADAC or whatever the automobile association
in your country is called, this is a rather challenging job.
Obviously it is possible to find a good mechanic in pretty much any
agglomeration, but where to look for one if you sit in the middle of
nowhere (N55 19.727 E63 25.519)?

We decide to hitch-hike with
Karossi, attached to our towing rope and hope someone would let us
attach. We decide to try into our heading direction, saving us a
dangerous U-turn by foot, although the next village in the opposite
direction would have been a little closer. Quiet surprised that one
of the first trucks stops by and pulls us the 30km with something
about 60-80km/h into the next village, called Mischkino. Getting
towed has never been a good experience, but doing it with an 8m long
elastic rope (planned rather for pulling us out of the mud than on a
street) behind a colossus of steel on a really unpredictable road
pavement stressed me out quiet a bit. Arriving in Mischkino would not
relax me for long as we were to find out that there is not any
mechanic around before Kurgan, another 100km further east. The
incredibly friendly truck driver decided to give it a quick try and
grabbed my tools and started working on the engine for a couple
minutes, unfortunately coming to the same conclusion as I did: we
need professional assistance. He did not hesitate a moment to jump
into his truck and wait for me to give him sign that we are ready to
be towed for another 100km. In the meanwhile he must have done some
logistics with his local contacts as we were hooked off somewhere on
the peripheral drive of the city and handed over to the person of all
our hope from PitStop, who towed us somewhere in the backyards of his
garage. Hardly any tools were used, but a lot of trial-and-error
tests were done, including calling in another expert for “old
German vehicles”, until the judgment was done: There is an ignition
spark, but it is too weak. Cause of the disaster is a defect Bosch
ignition coil. And obviously, there is no Bosch service in the
surrounding of a couple hundred kilometers. What to do?
Theoretically, ignition coils should do pretty much the same all
around the world, transfer the 12 volts of the car battery up to a
couple thousand volts in order to create the ignition sparks. So why
no try with a Russian model out of the Lada of one of the
apprentices? Quickly brainstormed whether something would blow up and
concluded that this should be done at least once during the existence
of human mankind and – it worked! Until today. And quiet honest,
Karossi never started that quickly since we got it about a year ago.
We called it the Russian experiment and I feel proud to drive along
with at least some parts of this proud nation (sometimes really
considering to buy a Lada 2107 for my next projects).

Other than that, our
Karossi is performing rather well in all the above traffic
situations, the suspension compensates all uneven streets well, the
roof-top turning lights helped to make the other traffic participants
understand the intentions of the “inexperienced” driver during
the first days. The interior and the roof mounts disassemble
partially from time to time due to the constant vibrations on gravel
roads but are tightened at all occasions. The exterior mirrors, the
sliding door and the wheel caps need some love from time to time to
stiffen them to mitigate noise development but are all still in
place. A rather big gravel stone was polite enough to slam our left
headlight rather than our windshield because the latter would be
rather hard to organize replacement for in Russia.

We will keep you posted
about the quiet probable upcoming German-Russian symbiosis
experiments.

2 comments:

hahahha. I love all the Russian absurd. Missing them hugely. When I read your stories it's like yesterday to me. You should be glad not to be a passenger - you have to move quickly even on the crossing and the pavement might not necessarily be for non-mobile people only and so on...:) keep your eyes open, don't stop thinking and accept:)xxx